


Portable Magic

by WhisperElmwood



Series: The Hastily Revised Bestiary of Stiles Stilinski (Mage) [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Magic Stiles, Supernatural Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 21:09:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhisperElmwood/pseuds/WhisperElmwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is an interlude and Stiles is paid a visit by something he doesn’t know, gifted with something he doesn’t understand and finds something he didn’t know he wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Portable Magic

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to my BETA's Dirtydirtychai and Polytropic-Liar, they did a fantastic job for me, so any mistakes left are totally my own fault. This monster has been in the works for more than two months now, and none of it would have been possible without Chai there to kick my ass every time I stalled and/or whinged.
> 
> This is the second installment, and sets the pattern for how it's going to go with each installment (long, short, long, short, etc.) Part 03 is currently being written, please hang in there :)
> 
> I sincerely apologize for the Old English, I don't speak it, so I had to use online translators. Sorry.
> 
> In part 03, things begin to get heavy. Be warned.

**Portable Magic**

 

The storm lasts three days. Nothing but driving rain and seventy mile an hour winds. It’s the worst storm Stiles has seen in years, and Beacon Hills is engulfed, silenced, under siege.

Near the end of the third day, something in the air--a charge, a spark, something he can’t quite name--makes Stiles leave the nest he and his father have made in the living room to go stand at the back of the house, staring out the window into the back yard.

He doesn’t realise he’s been staring so long until his dad comes looking for him, claps a hand on his shoulder companionably. He doesn’t startle, he knows it’s his dad, but he doesn’t look away, either, from the writhing trees that are bare feet from the edge of the Stilinski property line, thirty feet if it’s an inch.

“What’s up, kid?” His dad keeps his voice low, probably trying not to disrupt, as if he can feel whatever it is that’s in the air too.

Stiles shakes his head, very slightly, gaze never wavering from the trees.

“I’m not sure.” He takes a breath, sighs it out, “Probably nothing.”

He’s pretty sure something is out there, something huge, aware, powerful, moving through the trees under cover of the rain and wind, the low light. He’s pretty sure it’s benign, just passing through on its way elsewhere. He’s also pretty sure it’s waiting out there, looking back at him, contemplating him, as he contemplates it - and _he_ can’t leave until _it_ does.

So he stays. Standing, watching, waiting, until finally he feels the presence, the intelligent yet alien awareness, start to move away.

He waits until it’s completely gone, not even a blip on his otherworldly radar, and then he shivers, shudders, a whole body reaction to the utterly weird thing that just happened to him.

When he rejoins his dad in the living room, he takes advantage of his tolerance and curls in close, pulling one of his dad’s arms over his shoulders as he rests his head on his dad’s upper chest. He closes his eyes, revelling in the comfort so willingly given.

\---

The next day, Beacon Hills is a mess.

His dad is back on shift, after the rare weekend off. Stiles stands alone on the porch after waving him off, looking out at the waterlogged, detritus-strewn street. He feels a little disconnected, like last night never happened: like it was only a dream, a product of the storm playing on unspecified fears.

Except it really wasn’t. His dad had given him a concerned look over breakfast, carefully not asked questions about it. Stiles tries not to feel bad, knows his dad is still getting used to the idea of the supernatural and his son’s place in it. He feels bad about it anyway.

Trusting his instincts and distinctly _not_ thinking about it, Stiles wraps up warm and goes for a walk. He heads out the back way, over the fence and into the trees.

There’s a lot of damage: trees fallen, branches torn down and flung about, leaf litter and smaller, flimsier plants strewn everywhere. It makes moving difficult, but he perseveres.

He keeps his steps measured and careful where he can, letting his feet take him where they will, trusting those instincts that lead him out here in the first place.

It takes maybe thirty minutes, climbing, scrambling, mud everywhere, but he finds the clearing the creature had stopped in the night before. There’s no evidence of its presence, no prints, no markings, nothing left behind. He just knows, this, _this_ is the place, surrounded by the tallest trees, with the deepest undergrowth, almost a perfect circle. This is where the alien presence had stopped, looked toward him, and waited.

Stiles moves out to the centre of the clearing and closes his eyes.

It takes him a moment to focus – never his strongest point – getting his wildly flickering thoughts under control so he can concentrate. He hums a little to himself as he does.

When he’s ready, he reaches inside, plucks a tiny, infinitesimal spark of his magic, pulls and lifts it out, and then _weaves_.

The spell he creates is simple, but powerful. When he opens his eyes, he can see the threads of life all around him.

The first time he had done this, he’d plucked up a blade of grass, entranced by the hair-thin threads of silver running through it, like brilliantly lit veins. But the moment he’d broken the stem, pulled the blade free from it’s roots, the silver had faded, leaving him momentarily bereft.

Deaton had smiled at him, oddly, almost sadly, sympathetic.

Stiles is used to it now, the way the silver vanishes or fades to bronze and merges with the earth. It’s natural, part of the – _ha_ – magic of life itself. He’d broken out into a rendition of _The Circle Of Life_ when Deaton had explained, much to the man’s chagrin. Stiles still hums it to himself whenever he does this.

Now, he breathes out slowly and looks around.

Colour everywhere, overlying the vegetation, the natural colours pushed so far back as to be almost shades of grey. There’s bronze beneath his feet, the slow burn of the earth itself; the brighter silver of active life surrounds him, from the trees and the bushes, the saplings and the grass, the insects, small mammals and birds; on the edges of his vision, he can just make out two small sparks of gleaming gold, sparking and glowing, almost dancing – Portunes, he’s sure, probably attracted by the same thing that had attracted him.

Unexpectedly – or perhaps not, considering the circumstances – he sees a faint glow of bright white at the far edge of the clearing.

Stiles doesn’t see white often, when he uses this particular spell. White is the colour of magic used, of spell casting. He’s seen traces of it threading through the arms of Derek’s triskele; he assumes it’s a protection spell and doesn’t want to ask. He’s seen it in some of Alison’s weaponry: her blades, her arrows, all her inherited objects, presumably spelled years ago for accuracy and a sure kill. The necklace she wears, too, is threaded with white.

He sees it too, in the things Lydia wears, in the things she creates. Lydia uses magic like a toy, something she owns and can use _as_ she pleases, _when_ she pleases, and it leaves traces in the things she touches. Gotilda does the same, and the two women light up like miniature stars to him whenever he uses this spell, so that he can’t see anything but their light. He has to ask them to leave, every time; they do, but reluctantly, Lydia always with a frown, as if he’s affronted her on some deeper level.

Unnervingly, the place he sees it most often is in his own body, just under his skin, sparking and glittering. There are growing golden and bronze threads beginning to mix in with the white, intertwined inexorably with his own silver life threads, a mix that confuses and worries him in equal measure.

The traces of gold are left over from his own spell work, a style of casting that is vastly different from the two witches in his life. While they use the magic around them, pull it to them from _outside_ , finite sources that limits what they can actually do, Stiles uses what is _inside_ him, draws it up from a never ending well that he has so far been too scared to delve too deeply into.

The traces of bronze, though... He can’t think of any way that the bronze has begun to appear within him, within his own magic. He hasn’t mentioned it to anyone yet. Keeps his worries to himself, to pick at in the darkest moments of the nights, alone.

He doesn’t yet even understand _why_ his magic is different. _Why_ it appears to be a mix of different magics. Deaton has been typically close-mouthed on the subject.

He’s never seen the colour out in the open like this – not when there hasn’t been a coven involved, at least – and the sight leaves him slightly disconcerted. It forces him to come to the conclusion that his friend from the night before had been far more than he’d originally thought, and he hadn’t exactly thought it simply a beast.

Very few supernatural creatures have the ability to spell cast like this. Most of them simply are magic, it’s a part of their very existence. Even the werewolves are that way; magic is tied into their very beings, deep down inside, and it interferes with any attempt on their parts to use magic for themselves. Stiles should know, he’s seen his friends try often enough by now.

Stiles releases a long breath, calming himself further, then he pads carefully across the clearing, skirting the larger debris, to investigate the patch of bright light, of spell casting that draws his attention and interest. Whatever his friend was, if they’ve left something here, carefully wrapped in spells like this, then it must be a gift. He hopes, fervently, that he’s not about to make an ass out of himself and umption.

A crude circle has been made, using fist sized stones obviously dug up from the immediate area. Inside the circle, the earth is dry and utterly undisturbed; there aren’t even any stray leaves or twigs, nothing at all blown in from the storm.

He can tell, even from three or more feet away, that the spell is powerful. It protects everything within the circle of stone against the elements, the local fauna, even any other sentient life that might come looking, whether human or…other.

Stepping closer, Stiles glances around, checking there’s no one to see whatever happens next - he can still see the Portunes, right out on the edges of his vision - then crouches, rubbing suddenly sweaty palms on the thighs of his jeans. He chews absently at his lower lip as he contemplates the circle and the golden threads woven all around and through it. It’s beautiful. Intricate.

Now he’s close enough to look properly, he can see there’s absolutely nothing visible actually within the circle, just gently flattened, almost dusty dry soil. Stiles is pretty sure, though, that’s part of whatever this test is. Pass the test, get the gift. Obviously he’s gotta work for it.

“Alrighty then, mysterious benefactor. Let’s do this!”

He starts by examining the weave of the spell. This is old magic, and High Magics to boot, which means his friend from the night before was vastly more than it appeared. Even of those who are capable of performing real magic, most can only work at Medial level, and they need time, practice, and in a Witch’s case, talismans and objects of power.

This looks like it was woven with a spark like his own.

He spends a good fifteen minutes just looking, tracing every curve and thread of the weave, learning the shape of it, the feel of it. When he’s sure he’s got it, he hunkers down a little more comfortably and begins to work on pulling the spell apart.

Ten minutes in and he’s dripping with sweat, hating that he can’t just hit the thing with a counter-spell. High Magics are tricky like that, you have to pull each spell apart separately unless you know the specific counter-spell, the specific words and magic needed to close it off.

It’s definitely a  test, and he just hopes it’s worth it.

Undoing a spell this way is like playing a giant taxing circuit game with his mind, where his magic is the wand and he doesn’t know if the buzzer will put everything back to start position, blow him up, or some combination of the two. He’s not a fan of any of those outcomes, so he moves slowly and carefully, unwinding the knots of the spell piece by intricate piece, sliding threads of magic around more delicately than anyone would deem him capable of with his clumsy limbs and large hands.

Eventually, what must be at least an hour, more likely far more, later, he manages it. He slides the last thread through the last loop and suddenly everything falls away. He sits up straighter, rubs at a kink in the small of his back and watches as the complex spell drifts apart, falling away in languidly dancing sparks of diamond bright power.

What he’s left looking at is surprising.

“That... is a _big_ ass feather.”

There are actually two feathers in the circle. Or, he thinks that’s what they are. The largest is truly enormous, five or more feet in length, thin and tapered, obviously a wing feather. The only birds he can think of that are large enough to have feathers this big are gryphons or rocs, neither of which he’s even sure exist. The point of the shaft is buried a good six inches into the dirt, which means the damn thing’s probably as long as he is tall and it’s standing straight, the golden brown and white speckled vane glinting a little as the light hits it.

The smaller feather barely even looks like a feather. It’s about as long as his hand and segmented along the shaft, with sections of hard scale instead of soft vane - a feather-shaped scale, rather than a true feather. It lies at the base of the larger feather and is coloured much like a beetle, a deep, dark blue-black that glints green in the light.

Stiles gently runs his fingers along the vane of the larger feather. It’s stiff but yielding and soft to the touch and he can feel a deep thrum of power sealed within it. With his eyes still tuned to the threads of life and magic around him, he can see the traces of gold threading through it, indicating natural inborn magic that still thrives despite being disconnected from the animal.

He reaches down to pick up the smaller feather and finds it to be as light as a beetle carapace, just as stiff and strangely smooth to the touch. This feather-scale too is threaded with the gold of natural magic.

“Well. Whoever my mysterious benefactor is, thank you,” he says quietly, into the open air.

He very carefully removes the stone circle, making sure there’s no trace of it left for prying eyes to discover. He pushes the dirt around with his shoes, tries to make at least a bit of a mess, though he knows a tracker with any experience would be able to tell it’s man-made mess. Then he wraps his fingers around the shaft of the larger feather and carefully tugs it out of the ground.

The threads of life and magic continue to glow, even as he lifts it to look closer. There’s no white, so it hasn’t been charmed or cursed with anything; it really is exactly what it appears to be. A gift. He checks the feather-scale for the same things, and again, nothing.

After a minute hesitation, Stiles tucks the larger feather through a belt loop on his jeans, wearing it like a sword with the point of the shaft jutting out past his left hip. For some reason that just feels right, like he’s suddenly regained something he had lost.

He very carefully puts the feather-scale into a pocket, mindful of the delicacy of the thing.

Stiles stands for a moment, looking at the weather-beaten clearing, and realizes he feels accomplished and like he’s beaten some odds he wasn’t even aware of. It’s a strange feeling. He shakes his head and with a gentle tug at his magic, shuts down the sight-spell.

His vision returns to normal and he begins to pick his way back over the debris and toward home.

\---

The air is so much clearer after the weekend of storms. Standing on a tall outcrop of jagged rock some three miles from home, Stiles can see for miles around. He looks out over Beacon Hills and the Preserve and takes deep, cleansing breaths, filling his lungs with cleaner air and letting the comfort of standing on _this_ land, in _this_ territory, roll over him. It feels almost like he owns it, like he belongs here and it accepts him. He’s not sure where that comes from, considering it’s Hale territory, but he tries not to worry about it.

He sees a flicker of red to his right and a second later a small hunting party of Portunes joins him on the outcrop, probably the self-same Portunes that have been watching and trailing him all day. He looks down at them, smiles, and moves his gaze back to the view.

He doesn’t do this often enough. Derek and the pack go on runs through here at least once a week, often more. He’s considered joining them, um’s and ah’s over it every time, but he’s just not fast enough to keep up and he knows it.

Maybe he should start up a human pack members hiking thing.

“Wish you greeting, Stiles Stilinski.”

Stiles grins. “Greetings, Cniht.”

A rustling of movement amongst the Portunes lets him know that his acknowledgement of their titles has gone down well. He’s had fun researching the way they talk, actually, has picked up what he can. It’s a mix of Old English, Medieval English, contemporary English and a smattering of words from a dozen other languages they must have come into contact with over the centuries. There’s no real human sense to any of it, which isn’t unexpected, considering.

“How’re things in the Preserve?”

The Cniht hefts the bag slung over their shoulder. “Hunting éad. Home éad. Portunes éad. All éad.” It sounds happy, content, or something close to it, Stiles has problems deciphering the way the Portunes feel and express themselves. Their voices, intonation, and sometimes even their body language can be completely alien to him.

Stiles looks down at them again, brushing his fingers over the shaft of the larger feather as he does. He notices the way the Portunes watch his fingers and frowns slightly. “Anything wrong? Y’know, just in case I need to know.”

The Portune grins up at him behind it’s intricately knotted beard. “Thing happen. Egesung. Know this. Portunes come.” The smile fades and it says, possibly sadly, “Herebrógan.” It shakes its head a little. “Herebrógan.”

Stiles doesn’t know those words, hasn’t come across them in his research yet. “What. You guys really don’t give straight answers, do you?”

The Portune titters in it’s croaky voice, which is a very strange thing to hear. “Geondmengaþ. Portunes. Seht.”

Stiles sighs and rubs a hand through his hair, “I’ll take that as a _maybe_. Gods, you guys are worse than the books _ever_ said elves were like.”

The Portune outright laughs at him this time and when he looks down, they’re already gone.

\---

He’s almost home when he finds it. Or, more accurately, trips over it.

He manages to catch himself before he faceplants in the mud, but it’s a close call, and he ends up scraping both his palms and his knees, as well as getting covered in a spray of watery muck as he works to save both himself and his gifts.

“Fuck.” He spits out the mouthful of muck he’d gotten. “Also, _yuck_. Jesus.”

He wipes his hands on his jeans as he looks around to see what tripped him up.

It’s a … Well, it’s a branch. But it’s long and almost straight, with only one or two smaller branches sprouting from it. He runs his fingers over the bark, gently, gently, and feels a pull from within himself. Without hesitation he wraps his fingers tightly around it and lifts it up.

He puts the broken end to the ground and uses the branch to push himself to his feet. It’s a hair longer than he is tall, tapers slightly toward the end. It’s perfect, absolutely perfect, and he hadn’t even known he was looking for it.

He lifts it and runs his fingers over the bark again, eyes taking in every bump and dip, every sprout. His magic shifts gently inside and calls to the branch.

“A staff. I have a staff.”

 


End file.
